OFF THE FIELD, OUT OF MIND

Dodgers' Ohtani focuses on the game in face of a real estate lawsuit in Hawaii.

- JACK HARRIS

GINA FERAZZI Los Angeles Times THE LAWSUIT against Ohtani and his agent involves a luxury housing development in Hawaii.

Shohei Ohtani’s name is in headlines again.

And, for the second time in two years, not for baseball reasons.

News emerged this week that Ohtani, the Dodgers’ two-way star and reigning National League MVP, was being sued along with his agent in Hawaii by a real estate investor and broker.

The claim: that Ohtani and his representative, Nez Balelo of Creative Artists Agency, had the plaintiffs fired from a $240-million luxury housing development that Ohtani had been contracted to help endorse.

The contours of the case are complicated; relating to contract law, tortious interference and two years of alleged disputes between Balelo and the plaintiffs, developer Kevin J. Hayes Sr. and real estate broker Tomoko Matsumoto, leading up to their termination from the project.

But as it pertains to Ohtani and this current Dodgers season, only one question really matters:

Will the situation create any distraction for him off the field?

When pressed on that Wednesday, he quickly shut the idea down.

“I want to focus on the field,” Ohtani said in Japanese, after the Dodgers lost to the Angels to fall out of first place in the NL West. “Today, this team continued to lose, so I'd like the team as a whole to win a game quickly and try to win each and every game.”